George Takei: Why We Must Remember RohwerAs I write this, once again the national dialogue turns to defining our enemies, the impulse to smear whole communities or people with the actions of others still too familiar and raw. Places like the museum and Rohwer camp exist to remind us of the dangers and fallibility of our democracy, which is only as strong as the adherence to our constitutional principles renders it. People like myself and those veterans lived through that failure, and we understand how quickly cherished liberties and freedom may slip away or disappear utterly.

The Strangest Real-Life Graves in the WorldBaby TreesIn the Tana Toraja land on an island in Indonesia the youngest deaths in the local community are placed in a special burial tree. The "baby trees" are the final resting places for infants. If the child dies before it has started teething, the mother will wrap a baby in a cloth and make a hole in the tree. The baby is placed in the tree, and then sealed off. As the tree heals it's believed that the baby is absorbed by the tree. It's actually quite beautiful.

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said Monday he did not support the legalization of marijuana, though he did support some form of decriminalization.

“What I think is that if your kid or one of his friends goes out and gets caught with marijuana, sticking them in prison is a big mistake,” he told Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution. “So I don’t really believe in prison sentences for these minor non-violent drug offenses, but I’m not willing to go all the way to say it is a good idea either. I think people who use marijuana all the time lose IQ points, I think they lose their drive to show up for work.”

Paul, however, added that he believed individual states should be allowed to decide whether they wanted to legalize marijuana or not.

When Adam Halim returned from his honeymoon, his car was gone. It took him hours of phone conversations and lots of sleuthing to figure out what happened and why he had to pay the city nearly $1,000.

The answer, to his surprise, had to do with overgrown trees and three parking violations he had nothing to do with.

On April 26, Halim came home to discover his company car wasn’t parked where he left it outside his house on Dovercourt Road.

He called the police’s parking enforcement unit, which told him his car was impounded and in a lot.

It didn’t add up. He had a valid street-parking permit and could swear he left his Chevrolet Impala near home. Then another surprise at the impound lot — a bill for $734.50 and three $40 parking tickets.

He paid the bill and drove home. But he needed to figure out what happened.

All three parking tickets showed he parked in a no-parking zone in front of 55 Lisgar St. But how did it end up there?

He called parking enforcement again and pleaded with an officer to look deeper.

It turns out the city was cutting trees and needed to move Halim’s car, according to an email to Halim from parking enforcement. Parking enforcement explained that it had moved the vehicle one street over, but dropped it in a no-parking zone.

Then three tickets stuffed under the wipers over five days were followed by a trip to the impound lot.

On May 10, Halim received a final email, a mea culpa, from parking enforcement, promising reimbursement for the towing and storage cost and cancellation of the tickets.

Copperhead: Words That Got a U.S. Congressman Deported by Thomas DiLorenzoCongressman Clement L. Vallandigham (D-Ohio) was the original American "whistleblower." Serving as a member of Congress from Dayton, Ohio during the War to Prevent Southern Independence, his criticisms of the Lincoln regime earned him the reputation as the leader of the Democratic opposition. The Republican Party smeared him (and all other opponents as a "copperhead" (a.k.a. snake in the grass). On May 5, 1863, sixty-seven heavily-armed soldiers broke into his home in the middle of the night and dragged him off to a military prison. This was done without any due process, as Lincoln had long ago illegally suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus. He was said to be guilty of "discouraging enlistments" in the army with his criticisms of the Lincoln regime. A military order issued in the state of Ohio declared all such speech to be illegal, and military officers were to have dictatorial powers in deciding what kind of speech would be permitted there. All of this was of course done at the direction of Abraham Lincoln.